Surpassing Certainty

"A defining chronicle of strength and spirit" (Kirkus Reviews), Surpassing Certainty is a portrait of a young woman searching for her purpose and place in the world-without a road map to guide her. This memoir "should be required reading for your 20s" (Cosmopolitan).

A few months before her twentieth birthday, Janet Mock is adjusting to her days as a first-generation college student at the University of Hawaii and her nights as a dancer at a strip club. Finally content in her body after her teenage transition, she vacillates between flaunting and concealing herself as she navigates dating and disclosure, sex and intimacy, and most important, letting herself be truly seen. Under the neon lights of Club Nu, Janet meets Troy, a yeoman stationed at Pearl Harbor naval base, who becomes her first. The pleasures and perils of their relationship serve as a backdrop for Janet's progression through all the universal growing pains-falling in and out of love, living away from home, and figuring out what she wants to do with her life.

Fueled by her dreams and an inimitable drive, Janet makes her way through New York City intent on building a career in the highly competitive world of magazine publishing-within the unique context of being trans, a woman, and a person of color. Hers is a timely glimpse about the barriers many face-and a much-needed guide on how to make a way out of no way.

Long before she became one of the world's most respected media figures and lauded leaders for equality and justice, Janet learned how to advocate for herself before becoming an advocate for others. In this "honest and timely appraisal of what it means to be true to yourself" (Booklist), Surpassing Certainty offers an "exquisitely packaged gift of her experiences...that signals something greater" (Bitch Magazine).

“Redefining Realness is a riveting, emotional, crisply written testimony. I couldn't put it down. I aspire to be as unflinchingly brave! Janet Mock's story simultaneously embodies, complicates, and subverts the concept of American exceptionalism and self-creation.”

Autorentext
Janet Mock is a writer and activist, lauded by the Center for American Progress, Women's Media Center, and the Sylvia Rivera Law Project. A graduate of the University of Hawaii, she has an MA in journalism from New York University and has appeared on NPR, MSNBC's Melissa Harris-Perry, and HBO's The Out List. Find out more at JanetMock.com.

Klappentext

The writer, TV host, and advocate examines her life and career, including the challenges of being trans, a woman, and a person of color.

Zusammenfassung
Synopsis coming soon.......

Leseprobe
Surpassing Certainty

INTRODUCTION

MY BACK WAS EXPOSED IN A SLINKY HALTER as I made my way through Hot Tropics nightclub, my go-to spot on Thursdays in Waikiki. It was a bit past one A.M., and the gyrating bodies on the dance floor obscured my view of someone I once knew. I recognized her face at once: wide, open, and flat, like she was pressed against a window peering in. I used to see that same face in high school, across the cafeteria. We never had a chance to say hello but we were once part of each other’s every day. Oahu was small, linking locals socially by just a few steps. It was suffocating.

When our eyes met, I felt the shudder of her knowing glare. She was unmoving. I rushed for a seat in a red leather booth nearby to evade her. This also offered me reprieve from a roster of underwhelming dance partners. My bare thighs slid together as I slinked onto the seat in strappy high-heeled sandals that helped me achieve my ideal video vixen aesthetic.

Clubs are companions for those alone and awake. They fulfilled my desire to be desired and satiated my itch for a man’s body against mine—close, strong, and steady. I resigned myself to the possibility of spending the night alone, because my girlfriend Cassie, with whom I had arrived, could not peel herself away from a Brazilian guy with ravenous hands. Their bodies had settled into a cozy choreography, her lean thigh lifted to his hip, his hand supporting her as she curved her back in ecstasy. Their appetite for each other seemed to mean there would be no room for me in Cassie’s Lexus that night. Good for her, I thought, as I watched the guy pet her jet-black mane.

The drunk and jubilant revelers camouflaged me as I tried my best to recall the name of the woman from school. She was alone, tall, olive-skinned, and dark-eyed, leaning against the bar with crossed arms. She seemed unsatisfied by her own lack of prospects, which made me feel less alone. In a feminist utopia, we’d dance together, make a gleeful exit, and seek satisfaction with stacks of Denny’s buttermilk pancakes. Instead, she seemed to stand in judgment.

I had long grown familiar with this particular look—knowing, intense, and direct. She knows me, I warned myself. In my nineteen years, I hadn’t yet gotten used to the fact that nearly everywhere I went—from this club on Kuhio Avenue to the Ward Center cinemas and the pebbled walkways of my campus—someone knew me or had at least heard about me. Privacy wasn’t often granted to a girl like me who had spent years standing out by merely being. It was the price I paid for living my truth. She knew I knew that all it’d take to shatter my fragile normality as another pretty girl in a club was a whisper. The last thing I wanted that night was for her to speak. I didn’t want to be clocked, to be discovered, and excluded. Too many nights had ended with me upset by harsh truths that stripped me of my right to disclose and self-define on my own terms. The truth is a whip when wielded by a malicious mouth, lashing you into obedience and confinement, a stinging reminder that despite your best efforts, you are still captive to others.

I was so preoccupied by her menacing focus on me that I didn’t notice the towering man with onyx skin approaching me. His full plum lips curved into a smile and made his black eyes even more narrow, like marbles in the clasped hands of a child. He looked like a model on a Sean John runway, with carved cheekbones, a square jaw, and feline eyes. His head was bald and glistening under the club’s neon lights. He wore his handsomeness confidently but not cockily, commanding me to focus on him as he stretched his hand out to me.

“Can I have this dance?” he asked.

His presence left me with no other option but to peel myself from my seat. He led me to the crowded dance floor, where he spun me around and away, only to pull me back in. His hands caressed my waist, then slid to the small of my bare back. He made me feel ­chosen—the reason I had traded the comfort of my couch for the club. Sure, I wanted to be social, but ultimately, I wanted someone to say, Yes, you. I want you.

During a break between songs, I excused myself to go to the restroom.

“Can I get you a drink?” he asked.

“Ginger ale, please,” I said, as I turned away with a smile.

My reflection betrayed me as I took myself in at the crowded restroom mirror. My edges were sweated out. My skin had surpassed dewy and become drenched. At least my body was snatched, I thought, despite an unceasing terror that I was just a burger away from chubbiness. I was young, and my body was resilient enough not to succumb to my late-night diet (Taco Bell Mexican pizzas, Jack in the Box egg rolls, and Zippy’s chili and chicken mixed plates). I patted my face with a toilet seat liner, powdered my forehead, and reapplied a coat of MAC’s Prrr lipglass before returning to the dance floor. He was standing with our drinks right where I had left him.

“I just heard …